


begin living

by scrxbble



Category: Not Another D&D Podcast (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Post-Canon, i just think. hm, it's a hardwon character study, surviving and living, the others are here too but it's about my lad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:20:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27613382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrxbble/pseuds/scrxbble
Summary: Hardwon Surefoot has always known how to survive.
Comments: 24
Kudos: 50





	begin living

Surviving, Hardwon Surefoot thinks, is something he’s good at.

And yes, he means the kind that they write stories about, the kind where he and Moonshine and Bev fight froghemoths and battle bear princes and finally, finally kill Thiala. He’s slept in more places than he can count (nearly always with Moonshine curled up at his side and usually Beverly somewhere around their feet, for some reason) and eaten things that he probably shouldn’t have eaten and fallen from great heights that he made Moonshine and Beverly promise to never tell anyone about, and he made it out alive.

At some point, though, somewhere between the dwarphanage and a bayside town, Hardwon realized that he was good at the other kind of surviving, too. The kind where you put your head down when you need to so that the other kids don’t notice that you haven’t grown a beard yet. The kind where you smile and laugh and say the right things so that the barkeep doesn’t notice that your eyes are red and no one can see your hands shaking under the table. The kind where you know who you have to be, how you have to act, in any given room so that you don’t draw attention to yourself, don’t make yourself known, because attention can be deadly, and being known is worse than being ignored.

So he doesn’t go looking for fights, because he has found out all too well from nights in dark caves and early mornings running from the Bronzebeard castle and afternoons on a lonely open road that no one has warned him is traveled by bandits that, in his experience at least, fights will find him.

And sometimes he can’t help it - he forgets. He taunts Rust back and is nursing a black eye for two weeks. He rolls his eyes at just the wrong time and spends a month in the back of the minds. He pours beers out rather than deign to serve them to some foul-mouthed barbarian who’s picking on a child and this time, there are two people behind him swinging along with him.

That’s part of survival, too, a part he didn’t learn until later than most. Most people get to learn it as children from their parents, their siblings, their friends. Hardwon learned it as an adult from people who were each of those things and more - something like a father and an older brother and best friend all in one halfling-sized package, a sister and a mother and a partner in crime covered in rainbow spores, a student and a teacher and a little brother rolled up into one gold-toed smile, each of them teaching him that yes, surviving is fighting, and surviving is learning, and most of all, surviving is other people.

Surviving, Hardwon Surefoot thinks, is taking hits so the smaller kids won’t have to. Surviving, Elias Stormborn II thinks, is knowing when to step down so that the people who have your back can step forward. Surviving, one of the Titans of Bahumia thinks, is deciding that no matter what happens, the right side will win, because they have to. Because surviving, he thinks, isn’t about protecting yourself, not all the time. Surviving is about protecting those who need you more than you do.

But here, the Crick, with a bag in his hand and a box of papers at his feet, Hardwon Surefoot isn’t sure that he wants to be good at surviving anymore. He isn’t tired of life, not by any means, but he wants a life where he doesn’t have to be good at surviving - either kind. A life where there are no brutal battles, no social subtleties, and yet the same people in his life who love him. He wants to be good at living, not surviving, because those are two different things - surviving is going from one moment to the next and trying to figure out how to get to the next one in line alive. Living isn’t worrying about the moments.

Living is seeing the Crick children running around and shoving each other into a creek that’s a lot higher than it used to be. They ignore the water level change and rejoice in the new squelching mire at the banks and see who can sink furthest into it. Living is Moonshine waving at him from a tall stump, racing over to grab his box, raising an eyebrow when she catches a glimpse of what’s inside and pulling him along with her to the doorway. She disappears into what will become his kitchen and starts singing, barely audible over the noise from inside and out. Living is watching Bev and Erlin bicker happily about whether or not the Widow’s framed wanted poster is level on his living room wall and watching Ol’ Cobb grin as he purposefully knocks a corner askew. He catches Hardwon’s eye and starts to laugh, and Hardwon drops his bag and grins too.

Hardwon Surefoot has spent his life surviving, and he is ready, now, to live.

**Author's Note:**

> i was simply gripped by a need to write about hardwon surefoot and it's short but he.


End file.
